Hi all, Requiring that the user runs update-alternatives to run jabref is pretty crude and is the source of quite a few not-a-bug-reports against jabref.
It possible that this step can be made unnecessary so it would seem sensible to do so. It seems wrong that jabref can insist that the system-wide default java is sun-java.... what happens if there is another package on the system that requires free-java? The user doesn't want to have to switch back and forth all the time (and only the sysadmin can switch... what if you have multiple users on the box wanting the two apps at the same time?). So there are a few options: * hard code the paths for the sun jre into /usr/bin/jabref But that could be fragile as you say. Still, it would be better than the current situation! Requiring update-alternatives is even more fragile as evidenced by the number of bug reports that are solved just by running update-alternatives. * have /usr/bin/jabref search all versioned paths To start with you could just use either /usr/lib/j2re1.5-sun/bin/java or /usr/lib/j2re1.6-sun/bin/java depending on what is installed. If you wanted to get more fancy, you could iterate over all versioned paths for the form j2re*-sun. That's also potentially inelegant as it doesn't allow the user to specify to use java5 or java6 etc. But it would mean that jabref works out of the box which is a big improvement. * have an extra entry in /etc/alternatives for sunjava This would require cooperation from the packager(s) of the sun-java packages but would probably be the most elegant solution. One would have /usr/bin/sunjava -> /etc/alternatives/sunjava -> /usr/lib/j2re1.5-sun/bin/java Thus a script can just use /usr/bin/sunjava and get the system-wide default sun-java implementation not just the system-wide java. This seems to me to be the best solution in the long run, but I know little about debian java packaging! cheers Stuart -- Stuart Prescott www.nanoNANOnano.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]